I Heard a Fly Buzz when I Died

Emily Dickinson

I heard a fly buzz when I died;

The stillness round my form

Was like the stillness in the air

Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,

And breaths were gathering sure

For that last onset, when the king

Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away

What portion of me I

Could make assignable, — and then

There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,

Between the light and me;

And then the windows failed, and then

I could not see to see.

我听到苍蝇的嗡嗡声——当我死时

狄金森

灵石译

我听到苍蝇的嗡嗡声——当我死时

房间里，一片沉寂

就像空气突然平静下来——

在风暴的间隙

注视我的眼睛——泪水已经流尽——

我的呼吸正渐渐变紧

等待最后的时刻——上帝在房间里

现身的时刻——降临

我已经分掉了——关于我的

所有可以分掉的

东西——然后我就看见了

一只苍蝇——

蓝色的——微妙起伏的嗡嗡声

在我——和光——之间

然后窗户关闭——然后

我眼前漆黑一片——

About the poet:

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Dickinson left no formal statement of her aesthetic intentions and, because of the variety of her themes, her work does not fit conveniently into any one genre. She has been regarded, alongside Emerson, as a Transcendentalist.The motifs in most of her poems are beauty, immotality and death. she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life and became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Most of her friendships were therefore carried out by correspondence.

Notes:

This poem reflected her "early and lifelong fascination" with illness, dying and death. She reserved her sharpest insights into the "death blow aimed by God" and the "funeral in the brain", often reinforced by images of thirst and starvation. The process of dying is an outward expression of her needy self-image as small, thin and frail. Dickinson’s most psychologically complex poems explore the theme that the loss of hunger for life causes the death of self and place this at "the interface of murder and suicide".